Re: Autotest test suite size

[Derek Robert Price]

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Mark D. Baushke wrote:

>Has anyone given any thought to the idea that a portable 'shell
>function' approach could also be accomplished using external shell
>scripts and the addition of the directory containing those scripts into
>the PATH for the test?
>
>While I would prefer that these entities be "shell functions" for
>performance reasons, I would not have a strong objection to them being
>external scripts as long as the autotest macros took care of generating
>them for me and let me reference the tests so generated via another
>macro invocation.


By the nature of Autoconf, shell functions could possibly be implemented
via some sort of AS_FUNCTION_DEF hook that could create a function if
the shell supports it and an external script otherwise.  As long as the
external script directory was in the path, functions could be called
normally - no macro would be needed.

This would produce the best-case scenario when functions are supported,
but would only allow output strings and exit code to be retrieved from
functions.  Functions would not be able to reliably set shell variables.

Derek

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